Reflections on Existential Intelligence

It’s forty years since I first proposed “the theory of multiple intelligences,” generally abbreviated as “MI theory” or simply “MI.” The theory is a critique of the notion that there exists a single, general intelligence, adequately assessed by a single psychometric instrument, conventionally an IQ test.

In its stead, I proposed that the human brain—and the human mind—are better described as a set of relatively autonomous computational capacities, known as the multiple intelligences. IQ tests sample linguistic and logical-mathematical intelligence, in a fashion foregrounded in standard schools in the modern world. But there remain at least five other intelligences that are worth recognizing: musical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, and intrapersonal intelligence. According to the theory: Rather than possessing a single all-purpose intelligence, we human beings have at least seven intelligences; strength (or weakness) in one of the intelligences does not reliably predict strength or weakness in the remaining intelligences.

Put concretely, if we know that someone is strong (or weak) in music, what can one predict about their understanding of other persons, or of themselves? The answer: In truth, very little.

MI theory has never won over the psychometric establishment—the test makers—who continue to embrace the single IQ-style measure. But much of the rest of world—scholarly, educational, lay—embraces the idea of multiple intelligences. And thanks to the work of Daniel Goleman, there is widespread support for the idea of emotional intelligence, or EQ.

Once MI theory became well known, there have been numerous efforts to enunciate and incorporate additional intelligences—financial, sexual, humor, cooking—you name it.

The research that led to MI theory took several years to carry out and involved a sizeable research team. We examined evidence across the disciplinary spectrum—from genetics and brain science to anthropological and sociological studies. Only those candidate intelligences that registered significantly on these disparate disciplinary indices qualified as genuine intelligences.

Indeed, the core of establishing “MI theory” is the analytic procedure by which candidate intelligences are judged as valid and distinct from other intelligences.

Accordingly, before I considered adding additional intelligences to my cohort, any “candidate intelligences” had to meet the same criteria as the original septet. The only intelligence that has officially been added (as an 8th intelligence) is “naturalist intelligence”—the capacity to make significant distinctions among natural phenomena—among trees, birds, fish, clouds, mountain ranges and other flora and fauna. This capacity has clearly been important in the evolutionary history (and pre-history) of human beings.

In modern society, we do not need routinely to be able to distinguish one mushroom from another, or one snake from another. But in my judgment, we draw on these same perceptual capacities to distinguish among items in the grocery store (plum vs. cherry tomatoes), the furniture shop (Shaker vs. colonial chairs), or the clothing boutique (peasant vs. vintage blouses).

Life is short and I have not had the wherewithal to consider other plausible intelligences. But I have considered informally two additional intelligences—pedagogical intelligence and existential intelligence.

Pedagogical is relatively simple and straightforward: it’s the human capacity to teach skills to other human beings (or less often, to animals or to computers). What distinguishes pedagogical intelligence is the capacity to understand which information, which models, which demonstrations will work effectively with other individuals. Even a three- or four-year-old, having picked up a skill, will model it quite differently, depending on whether that child is explaining or demonstrating the skill to a two-year-old, as compared to conveying it to a five-year-old or an adult. And of course, children differ significantly from one another in how well they can teach others. (As do adults: two violinists may be equally proficient performers: one may excel in teaching, the other may exhibit remarkably little pedagogical talent.)

That, in short, is pedagogical intelligence—which might well be a component of interpersonal intelligence. Hence, my hesitation in simply adding it to the panoply of intelligences.

Existential intelligence is a far more formidable capacity. Described succinctly, it’s the capacity to pose and reflect on the big questions of life: who are we, where do we come from, where are we headed, what is our place in the universe, why do we exist at all, what, indeed, is existence?!

Three thoughts arise immediately:

  1. This sounds like philosophy—particularly existentialism—a branch of philosophy usually tied to French thinkers like Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, and Simone de Beauvoir, but actually dating back at least to the early 19th century Danish thinker Soren Kierkegaard, and the late 19th century German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche.

  2. Beyond philosophy, how does existential intelligence relate to other human preoccupations—such as religion and mythology?

  3. Isn’t existential intelligence just a skill associated with standard schooling—in which case, it draws on language and logic, on standard IQ, and does not require other fancy psychological analyses, metrics, terminologies?

All reasonable questions. Let me start with the last—it’s more straightforward.

In thinking about these issues, I find it useful to revert to two psychologists who had great influence on 20th century thought, including my own. One is Jean Piaget, the developmental psychologist, who probed “the child’s conception of the world.” The other is Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, who wrote about infantile sexuality, but also the panorama of dreams, wishes, anxieties, and phobias that characterize all of us from a young age.

I mention these two thinkers, these pioneers, because they both sought to enter the world of the child’s mind. Admittedly they drew principally on the mind of the European child 100-150 years, but also—and ambitiously—on the more general mind (as it were, The Mind of All Human Beings).

Surely, Piaget and Freud would have agreed, language and logic are featured in the kinds of questions, concerns, anxieties that a person—be it a young child or an aging adult—raises and ponders. But these scholars—along with many of us who followed in their footsteps— recognized that the child’s mind was far more than simply a blend, a reflection of these two “scholastic” forms of knowing. Piaget focused on actions upon the world (he called them “operations”) and the insights gained from actions; Freud explored the imagination, emotions, the fears, anxieties, and aspirations which were as likely to be captured in dreams or works of art as in stories or equations.

Indeed, we—all human beings— behold the natural world; we listen to and sometimes create music; we test the limits of our bodies, in sport, dance, exercise; we explore the range of space (those within our ambit, those that stretch as far as the eye—the conventional telescope, or, as of late, the NASA Webb telescope—can stretch. And these mental exercises draw, individually and corporately, on the range and combinations of human intelligences.

A child may ask “What is going to happen to me?” or “How high does the sky reach?” or “What’s the smallest number in the world? Or the largest?” But these verbal expressions are only—or primarily—an entry point to the exercise of several other intelligences, not particularly or naturally scholastic in nature. And children can address such issues as well through play, dance, song, dreams, or even nightmares… with attendant symptoms and attendant symbols.

Turning to the other questions:

As I view it, philosophy is a scholarly discipline. It may well have arisen in diverse cultures, but in the West, we associate philosophy with the questions and problems first pondered thousands of years ago by Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and their students—and carried forward in the last millennium by thinkers like Thomas Aquinas, Rene Descartes, Immanuel Kant, and Ludwig Wittgenstein.

I posit that myths are the pre-modern version of philosophy, including the philosophical school called existentialism. While most cultures do not feature the academic discipline of philosophy, nearly all feature mythology—a genre which naturally raises, addresses, and seeks to resolve fundamental issues of existence. Myths endorse, highlight, or less regularly expel issues of existence.

So this, in short, is the thinking, the evidence, on the basis of which I speculate about the possibility of a separate existential intelligence. In the modern West, the discipline of philosophy may be one culmination of existential intelligence, at least in a scholastic setting. But the impulse to ponder, pose, and progress on the biggest (and the most minute) issues of life and death are part of the human condition—and may well qualify as a distinct form of human intellect. And these impulses may well be found across a range of persons—from choreographers to physicists.

There’s the case for a distinct existential intelligence. It can lead to philosophical thinking, including an embracement or a rejection of the philosophical school of existentialism.

But it’s equally important to state what existential intelligence is NOT.

  1. It’s not a religious intelligence. It neither requires nor precludes a belief in an organized religion, with a potpourri of gods, or just one God… with numerous rites and prayers or only a conversation with the Almighty. Of course, religious people may well engage in existential pondering—though they may also be wary of reaching skeptical conclusion.

  2. It’s not a spiritual intelligence—that is, it does not require a belief – or a presence—in a spiritual realm. While spirituality may indeed compose an important part of existential thinking, it’s not required—and spirituality might well be absorbed in other intelligences, ranging from musical to spatial to naturalistic. And some of the most important philosophers and philosophies deliberately avoid any mention—let alone a celebration—of the spiritual.

  3. It’s not a value judgment. One can put existential intelligence to benevolent uses—for example, Grete Thunberg’s passion for preserving the environment. And one can put it to malevolent uses: the Nazi’s belief that they were purifying the race and creating a superhuman may well have involved existential thinking, but it is hardly praiseworthy.

Relatedly, value judgements are just that—they reflect each person’s current sense of what is good and what is not. While most readers of these words would presumably endorse the Thunberg program, while challenging the Nazi program, there are significant numbers of individual who would not agree. (As an additional example, consider the wide division in contemporary US citizens about what is benevolent and what is malevolent in our current system of government).

Values are not the same as intelligences. Indeed, to play with words, values can reflect stupidities as well as intelligences. It’s important to keep them straight and not conflate them.

Let me put it differently (and in contemporary lingo). The intelligences—whether or not one includes “existential” in their ranks—are simply computational capacities—strings of 1 and 0 as it were. The uses to which these strings are put reflect human values within or across cultures and not neuronal computations.

To be sure, issues of spirituality and of religion are very important—arguably more important than issues of intelligence(s). But they require a different analytic lens and may well not be explicable in terms of current social science.

(With thanks to Courtney Bither, Shinri Furuzawa, and Ellen Winner for their careful reading and suggestions on an earlier draft.)

References

Gardner, H. (1983). Frames of Mind: The theory of multiple intelligences. Basic Books.

Gardner, H. (2006). Multiple Intelligences: New horizons. Basic Books.

Goleman, D. (1995). Emotional Intelligence: Why it can matter more than IQ. Bantam Books.